On The Social Function Of Legal Consciousness

"Governing the country by law, building a socialist legal state", that's the grand object of Chinese people in the 21st century. However, during the construction of a government by law, we are still confronting a lot of challenges and difficulties. Among which, the low efficiency of the realization of law is one of the most prominent expression. In modern China, the relationship between the social entity's legal consciousness and the efficiency of the realization of law has formed kind of a paradox. The general low level of the social entity's legal consciousness is an important reason that causes the functions of legal consciousness fail to give full play, and consequently causes the low legal efficiency.As a social adjusting consciousness, legal consciousness bears important social functions. No matter which country or nation, its social entity's legal consciousness is the indispensable spiritual condition for the emerging, operating and developing of its social legal system; the social entity's legal consciousness is the internal spiritual motive of the high efficiency of the realization of law; and, the legal consciousness can influence and affect the social life significantly. The research on the functions of legal consciousness in the realms of social economy, politics, culture, etc, and the mechanism of these functions will not only help us to solve the problem of low legal efficiency, but also make us to observe and analyze the legal consciousness phenomenon from the height of the progress of social history and culture, so as to understand the significant meaning of legal consciousness to the construction of a legal state. So, the probe into the social functions of the legal consciousness is of great theoretical and practical significance.This essay starts with the basic concept and features of legal consciousness, adopts the methods of systematic analysis and that of the science of legal culture, taking legal consciousness as a sub-system under the social cultural system. In the first place, it makes a structural analysisto legal consciousness, revealing that legal consciousness is an organic whole with its own internal structure that can perform certain functions. Then, the essay takes to discuss the functions and roles of legal consciousness as a system towards social economy, politics, and cultural system from the angles of economy, politics and culture respectively.The meaning of function lies in the realization of it. After a comprehensive discussion of the social functions of legal consciousness, the essay makes an analysis of the problem of the realization of the legal consciousness's social functions. As the author puts it, the obstacle against the realization of legal consciousness's social functions is the general low level of social entity's legal consciousness. And then, the author points out the crucial point of solving the above problem, that is, the social cultivation of the citizens' legal consciousness. According to the author, we should cultivate the citizens' legal consciousness through various ways, around the center of changing their sense of law, and with the final aim of setting up a general belief in law of the whole society. With the universal rise of the social entity's level of legal consciousness, the social functions of legal consciousness will gradually make a full play in our social life, and the progress of building a legal state in China will surely be accelerated greatly.